Human Resource Assignment On

Training and Development ProcessOf

Emirates Airlines

Company of interest: Emirates Airlines

Position: Cabin Crew

Introduction:

Emirates is one of the fastest growing airline in the world amongst all the other international airlines. Emirates main goal from the beginning was of attaining quality and not quantity. Emirates strives to provide best services to their consumers and expand their business by doing so, to achieve goals and objectives in order to be successful.

The Learning and Development department is responsible for corporate training for the Emirates Group. Training takes place at The Emirates Aviation College, a modern facility in the center of Dubai. 

The courses are facilitated through a variety of mediums including classroom based, on-the-job, online (eLearning), practical assessment, simulation, project based or a combination of these options.

In addition to this, ‘My Learning Zone’ is the Emirates Group learning portal. It provides a one-stop location for accessing training and development information and for online learning courses for all employees.

Plateau Systems, a leading provider of talent management software, content and services, using highly-scalable Learning Management Systems (LMS) manages to support learning and development for emirates global workforce.

All Emirates Cabin Crew are provided with seven weeks of Ab Initio training, in a dedicated state of the art Cabin Crew training facility, at the Emirates Aviation College.

Emirates Cabin Crew Training includes a combination of both theoretical and practical components, with the latter taking place in full motion simulators of all aircraft types. This ensures the most realistic learning conditions, giving the experience to deliver the finest service in the sky as part of the  Emirates Cabin Crew team.

The initial Emirates Cabin Crew training will cover:

• Safety and Emergency Procedures (SEP) • First Aid (accredited by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh) • Service • Emirates Cabin Crew Image and Emirates Cabin Crew Uniform • Fitness and Nutrition • Security Procedures

Training and Development Process:

Emirates cabin crew is regarded as one of the best. The cabin crew is of a variety of nationalities from around the world, coming from over a hundred and twenty countries, and speaks over eighty languages.

Since the cabin crew are constantly in immediate contact with the customers and also responsible for all on-board operations, Emirates spends about five to six percent of their revenues on training and development, as opposed to other airlines that spend a mere three to four percent.

Training and Development are a very important process for an organization. Training emphasizes on the skills an employee will learn which would be used in their immediate job. Emirates Airlines follows a systematic approach to training.

Emirates make use of a three step process:

• Assessment, which is basically a question as to what is needed, where, when and by whom.

• Training activity, which helps attain the objectives of that would satisfy the airlines goals.

• Evaluation process, which is measuring the outcome of the various training activities.

Assessment:

Emirates Airline recognized that frequent flyers wanted a better of quality service when they flew from one destination to another. Hence this was the assessment stage. This fueled their objectives as Emirates Airline did the best they could to provide this service to their valued customers, a service offered that was better than any other competitor.

Training Activity:

The Emirates Airlines training facility is a specifically built only for employee training. It is a seven story, state of the art center.

Emirates Airlines commits to development of employees by empowering their conventional skills. This program ensures employees are equipped with adequate techniques and methods.

The training activity phase of the three step process to systematic training is further broken down into different types of training activities and processes:

Classroom education is one such type. This form of training is the most economical and also enables trainees to share their opinions and exchange ideas with each other, hence expanding each individual’s knowledge. Most airlines use this type of education as their primary training method, whereas Emirates Airlines uses it only as a basic method, which is collaborated with many other types of training methods.

Simulation is another form of training that is usually one of the most expensive type of training methods. Emirates Airlines uses simulation training in the form of machine simulation. Machine simulation is a term given to facilities that are provided to employees that are exact replicas of the equipment in the actual work environment. Emirates Airlines has commissioned thirteen such simulators that cover all types of aircrafts.

These are exact copies of the actual cabins in the aircrafts. These simulators are very important with respect to safety and emergency training of employees. They are equipped with smoke simulators and visual and audio displays, as well as two flight demonstration kitchens with fully functioning equipment.

On the job experience is another method used by Emirates Airlines to train their employees. When on duty, the emirates employees are to use the purpose-built, exclusive departure and arrivals terminal. This type of training extinguishes the issue of transferring the learning situation to the job.

Action Learning is also a type of training that deals with learning by experience. Emirates Airlines also provides their cabin crew with ‘mock-ups’ that enable the employees to receive hands on training. They are also given assignments related to issues and problems that are dealt with on the job and assessed as to how they react to these issues and solve them.

These assignments are either individual or group assignments. Project based group assignments aid in enhancing an individual’s tolerance for team building and coordination. Emirates Airlines uses this method of training to evaluate one’s strengths and weakness, thus playing to the strengths and developing the weaknesses.

With respect to the different types of technologies used in training of employees, Emirates uses Multimedia training and Web-Based training.

Multimedia training is a combination of both Audio-Visual and Computer-Based training. Computer-Based training helps in developing the computer skills of an individual whereas Audio-Visual training is the use of interactive video’s so as to help trainees understand actual on-duty situations and interactions with customers.

Web-Based training is provided to employees through a internet or intranet browser. Hence it is accessible anywhere, thus working to the advantage of Emirates Airlines’ cabin crew who are constantly traveling.

One of the most productive and effective modern methods of training and development in various organizations, particularly for staff or departments and teams is linking Mentoring and Projects.

This approach builds on management by objectives principles which are more participative, voluntary and inclusive. Mentoring ensures that targeted staffs have interpreted discussion with line-managers of training delegates as well as strategic managers of the organization. Again, mentoring brings to picture pre-training skills/behavioral needs analysis of all training delegates.

The main role of mentors in training and development is to help mentees find the right answers for themselves. The principle for mentorship is said to be effective when the mentor helps mentees gain the experience of learning. The principle implies that the mentor focuses on mentoring efforts and expectations on helping and guiding the mentored to develop solutions and find answers for themselves. Most of the principles of mentoring are common to those of proper coaching, which are specifically prominent within line training.

Evaluation:

Evaluation is a process of measuring the training activities and determining as to if they attained the objectives and to what level. As in the case with Emirates Airlines, they have attained innumerable awards for their service quality. They are known for the experience they provide to their customers and are considered one of the best airlines in the world.

Thus to conclude, Emirates Airlines is one the leading airlines in the airline sector and the credit goes to the practices and strategies they follow. The HR department at Emirates integrates the aims and vision into the strategies. Besides this, they also have facilities for internal growth of employees and an up-to-date training and development program.